The Tomorrow Club aims to support and mentor young writers amid polarity and tech-driven chaos
https://globalvoices.org/2025/12/26/tomorrow-club-spotlighting-and-mentoring-young-writers-amid-polarity-and-tech-driven-chaos/

Red Sprites and Circular Elves Lightning over Italy https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap251223.html #APOD

Ever wondered how I create labels with the exact shapes of screw heads?

I use the "Schraubenkiste" font, perfectly designed for this task! Found it a few years ago and it's been super handy.

Grab it for free under the SIL open font license at: http://www.peter-wiegel.de/Schraubenkiste.html

#Font #Label #Organization #StorageBoxes

'The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is the average number of children that a woman is likely to have in her lifetime...By Indian estimates, TFR fell below replacement in 2019, with TFR in urban India reaching this milestone much earlier in 2004. TFR in rural India is also estimated to have fallen below replacement as of 2023'
https://scroll.in/article/1088406/fertility-faultlines-the-unsolved-puzzle-of-why-indian-women-are-having-fewer-babies?fbclid=IwY2xjawO1LU1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeNwupn_CEZMHyUMgseyUan5oY4-lC61lb5qBl5fFbyxoZ1G1m_1zi2Vngi2Y_aem_wrKnsnP4xmaznAsxIKoOLw

There is a Hindi phrase, आपके मुंह में घी शक्कर हो. Literally, it wishes you ghee (clarified butter) and sugar in your mouth. Metaphorically, it means something like ‘from your mouth to god’s ears,’ or ‘may your words come true.’
@pluralistic, I don’t know your taste in sweet dishes, but may you get as much ghee and sugar as you desire. https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington

Not my dimensional gate, not my demons.

Techniques of Successful Con Men: Find ways to acquire expensive properties at bargain prices. [news report, March 4, 2025] https://improbablestuff.substack.com/p/con-men-hunt-for-bargains

✨ new on #TheFutureIsFederated 🚀

"My Fediverse Starter Guide" for newbies, based on my video and articles about Fediverse software and culture.

🔗 : https://news.elenarossini.com/my-fediverse-starter-guide/

mentioning @Mastodon @news @gotosocial @pfefferle @pixelfed @peertube

If you share it with friends/family, let me know how it goes and if this guide is helpful to them 🙏

#digitalliteracy #BigTech #tech #SocialMedia #FOSS #blog

@zigzackly @meganL

I'm in Germany and sometimes older relatives will bring something over and it is in one of those high quality plastic bags from the 1980s. They are almost exclusively from clothing stores or department stores. And you can tell they're from before the 1990s because we changed all the zip-codes after the reunification. And I can confirm: those last forever. As children we would use them as substitues for sleds (less heavy to carry up the hill).

@meganL
Oh, and street food was mostly served to you on sheets of newspaper, no cutlery.

@meganL
Garment shops were the only ones that would give you plastic bags. And these were high quality plastic that could be used again and again for other things. There is an oft-repeated joke that in every Indian middle class home there would be a plastic bag full of plastic bags

@meganL
Small, cheap neighbourhood restaurants mostly served you in steel plates and gave you water in steel tumblers. Expensive places (any place that had AC) used china plates and glass tumblers.

@meganL
I am in India, so I don’t know if this will be useful for you. My childhood was way before India’s economic liberalisation, and a big part of it was in metropolitan areas.

We got a lot of dry goods packed in paper or in thin cardboard boxes (unlaminated). Plastic was rare. Liquids mostly came in glass bottles. For a lot of our regular food purchases, one carried one’s own cloth bags. Home-delivered milk came to you in bottles, and (you left the previous day’s bottle outside the door).

The most enshittification-proof way to get the Enshittification audiobook, ebook and hardcover is to pre-order them on my Kickstarter! Help me do an end-run around the Amazon/Audible audiobook monopoly and disenshittify your audiobook experience in the process:

http://disenshittification.org

2/

I’d put together a summary of what’s going on in Jakarta lately but @cprabhaswara@threads.net already did.

Here’s in text version:

Updates from Jakarta,
31 August 2025

Arson Confirmed to be Elaborate

We now have visual evidence that MRT stations and bus stops were elaborately set on fire by tall, muscular looking men who did not come with the protesting masses.

As mentioned before, this is the same playbook as used in the 2020 Protests. NarasiTV has a documentary on this issue titled '62 Menit Operasi Pembakaran Halte Sarinah.
Several provocateurs has also been identified as tall, muscular, and equipped with running shoes.

Looting happened in more places

Several politicians' houses has been looted including the residence of the Minister of Finance Sri Mulyani, MP Eko Patrio and several unconfirmed others.
Yet, different with Sahroni's house, the looting was done very quietly, orderly, and done by masses in black, unidentified.

[my note: Ahmad Sahroni is an extremely affluent legislator who said last week that people were morons to want a dissolution of the parliament. He’s also known to doxx critics. He fled to Singapore and is thought to be in Germany right now.]

We are very concerned that this might be another false flag operation to create a false state of emergency.

Several cats and dogs were also evacuated from their residences.
Most were found alone and deserted by their owners, taken in by neighbours.
It is also to be noted that on normal days, these residences are heavily guarded by the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) who are noticeably missing from the streets so far.

Police have started using real bullets.

After a rolling blackout, some gunshots were heard and real bullets were found in the streets.
So far, no victims yet, and as such we think shots fired to the sky is a way to warn and terrorize the people.

The Head of the Indonesian Police has been quoted to say 'shoot them all, even if you have rubber or real bullets, shoot them all

The quote came from a leaked recording of their internal briefing, addressing the head of regional police forces nationally.

The People have also made several arrests of provocateurs, finding Military Personnel IDs on them.

This confirms suspicions that arson and some acts of provocation were done deliberately to blame the People and enable more repression.

TikTok is Censoring Us.
Live broadcasts have been disabled nationally and algorithm has been modified to push newsworthy content less.

Outside of Jakarta
There have been reports of:
• attacks by unknown individuals and masses
• rolling blackouts
• arson of heavily-guarded buildings
• arbitrary arrests by police
• police coming into student dormitories
• excessive use of tear gas, including expired and unstable ones, in residential areas

https://www.threads.com/@cprabhaswara/post/DOAOvpRk9UC

#TootSEA #Indonesia

NGC 7027: The Pillow Planetary Nebula https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250831.html #APOD

"50-year-old Belgian trade attaché carried with him nine posters bearing the image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stamped with the words: “wanted for crimes against humanity”. He plastered them at Malcha Marg Diplomatic Enclave.

But this would cost de Bassompierre his job and force his family to end what life had been for them in India.

Ten days after the posters, de Bassompierre was sacked by the Belgian government"

https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/08/29/a-belgian-attach-pasted-netanyahu-wanted-posters-in-delhi-then-he-had-to-leave-india?s=09

EVERY COMPANY: heyyyy girl

ME: what's up

EVERY COMPANY: we've got a new feature for you!! 😀

ME: what is it

EVERY COMPANY: it's a brand new feature you're going to love it

ME: is it AI?

EVERY COMPANY: it... what? nooo...

ME: it's AI isn't it.

EVERY COMPANY: it's... not... not AI

ME: no I don't want it

EVERY COMPANY: but you haven't even tried itttt

ME: yes I have. it's horrible. i hate it.

EVERY COMPANY: but gurrrl those were the other AIs. our AI isn't like other AIs. our AI is ✨special✨

ME: no it's not it's the same shitty LLM just rebranded for whatever company

EVERY COMPANY: but that's what makes it ✨special✨

ME: oh fucking hell

EVERY COMPANY: our AI is named "Bob". bet you haven't talked to an AI named Bob yet have you? eh? eh? pretty special right?

ME: what the fuck no I do not want Bob the AI. just let me use your product without it.

EVERY COMPANY: oh no you can't do that

ME: why not?

EVERY COMPANY: because Bob AI makes everything easier.

ME: name one specific thing Bob the LLM makes easier

EVERY COMPANY: well he uh... um...

ME: ...?

EVERY COMPANY: uhhhh...

ME: ...?

EVERY COMPANY: he's your friendly helper.

ME: I don't need a friendly helper. I just want to use your product.

EVERY COMPANY: but we spent so much moneyyyyy on himmmmm you just gottaaaaaa

ME: no, I'm uninstalling Bob right now

EVERY COMPANY: oh no no no we can't let you do that

ME: I can't uninstall the AI?

EVERY COMPANY: no of course not

ME: and why not?

EVERY COMPANY: because then how would you possibly use Bob AI?

ME: I just told you I won't be using Bob the AI.

EVERY COMPANY: but how would we help you if you need help?

ME: literally any other way. call me, email me, text me, hell snail-mail me if you have to. plenty of customer service options to choose from.

EVERY COMPANY: oh we couldn't possibly do any of that

ME: and why would that be??

EVERY COMPANY: oh because we fired our customer service department. it just wasn't in the budget this year.

ME: and why not??

EVERY COMPANY: well to pay for Bob AI of course!

ME: I'm throwing your product in the trash. don't ever contact me again.

@jack_daniel @pluralistic Reminds me of one of my favorite sysadmin jokes:

The Sysadmin Wilderness Survival Kit consists of a couple of meters of fiber in a carrying pouch and a small shovel.

If you’re ever lost in the wilderness, you take out the fiber and bury it under a few feet of earth.

Within two days, a backhoe will appear and cut the fiber, and then you just follow the backhoe back to civilization.

Regulations for all 50 states formatted in xml and current as of June 30, 2025 are available for download. https://archive.org/download/state.regulations.bulk/2025.Q2/ This is our 21st quarterly release.